More Than Zero

Bret Easton Ellis Reviews Your Novel

As reward for donating to his film.

That’s one way to get a good review. As a prize for donating $5,000 to Bret Easton Ellis’s Kickstarter for his film The Canyons, Pablo D’Stair had the privilege of Ellis reviewing his work. The book, Regard, is an experimental novel about a troubled 13-year-old. Ellis’s review, posted Wednesday on Vice, is mostly favorable, although he does manage to say things like “it’s hard not to wonder why someone would attempt to write a book like this now,” and “it’s not annoying enough to toss right away.” His final verdict is that to have written Regard “takes a lot of daring and ambition” and D’Stair clearly “cares about language.” In the coming weeks, Ellis will review six more novels from other writers who donated that same amount.